I'm Coming Home
by Daughter of the North
Summary: Everyone needs a home, something stable, somewhere that makes you feel safe. Leaving home doesn't make the ghosts leave you; it just hinders your healing. You have to face your mistakes and triumphs to heal after a tragedy. A take on Gale's return home to District 12, made complete with apologies, Prim, and cookies.


**This little guy has hung out on my desktop for a long time, and I decided to make use of my lack of homework and make him presentable. Please enjoy:)**

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**I'm Coming Home**

One of the most basic needs for humanity is a home. To function, every person needs something that creates some form of stability. Some need it more than others, and some need there no stability to be at home. The word home does mean the same thing; home can be a feeling, a food, a view from a certain window. Home can be a person. Home can be anything.

Home is where the heart is.

If I knew where mine was, maybe I wouldn't feel so lost. The tailspin that is my life was strained when my father died, bowed when Katniss was Reaped, fractured when Peeta kissed her, spider cracked when she was Reaped again, began to melt away as the fire consumed Twelve and shattered when I watched her snap under the wieght of the fear. Then the stupid bomb took all the shards and ground them up under uncertainty, revulsion and pain. My heart is so full of scars and cracks that never truly healed before being torn raw again that I don't really understand anything except the fact that I must make everything work. So much has been sacrificed for this freedom; so much that if it fails, I will hold myself personally responsible.

I am in the only place I ever considered home. Of all the districts I had worked in, for all the time I had spent in my lavish apartment in Two, Twelve was where my fondest memories where. At the time, the lurking hunger and threat of a televised death hardly seemed like stuff I would long to reminisce, but there was certainty in that, an innocence that I possessed in those childhood years that I cannot hope to recapture. Of course, I would give up anything for freedom again, but standing and seeing the square for the first time in the daylight in years, my brain begins to wander to questions and faces that I had tried to close up. I had gone straight to Rory's house after I arrived, not wanting to have to face my past late in the evening after my long train ride. Now, this afternoon, after I have slept as much as I could manage, I am out and about, walking through my old home. The square has changed so much it is nearly unrecognizable; storefronts burst will colors, and the familiar dust of coal seems practically gone.

_How long has it been?_

I look around at district, trying to remember my last images of it from my memory. When did I last see these streets? Was it from the hovercraft? The propos? I don't remember much from those days except a pain that laced through my body as I watched Katniss cry and understanding suddenly much more acutely why I was fighting. The Capitol had fragmented the strong girl whom I had grown up with. Those months had been harried and desperate. I had been swept up among my ideals and passion for victory and sweet freedom and deposited at the base of a waterfall. The victory had nearly killed me; both physically and emotionally, and the weight of the mortality forced me down to near depression for several years.

But I was a fighter and never did actually succumb. I had decided to live so that no child again would be Reaped, no government would again control us in such a way as Snow managed to. I fought for what everyone died for. I spoke for the dead's dreams; I lived to avenge their blood. What had happened during the war would never be okay by any means, but we had been given the chance to live in liberty.

I strain to remember my parting as I watch people wander through town, oblivious to my brooding.

_I__t has been a while, if I cannot remember my last memory._

All I recall of this place is broken; I see my father laughing and swinging me in his big arms. I see Posy, Vick and Rory giggling in our meager garden as I chase them. I see the cloud exploding from the shaft that broke, taking half my world with it. I see Katniss standing, shy and defiant, in the woods with a bow. I remember the Games that changed our world for better, but me for worse. I recall conversations that traumatized our friendship while she was forced across a void I couldn't span. I couldn't fix her; I couldn't save her flailing soul. Only _he_ could do that. Now I understand, but then I didn't, and I felt such a mass of churning emotions. I remember the fear that filled my gut as I creaked down into the mine for the first time, swearing in my head that I could still hear my father's last screams.

Mostly I remember ashes. All my memories, good and bad, are laced with ashes and cinders, broken corpses and smoking piles of rubble.

My brow creases as I stand where the whipping post once stood. A statue stands where the stocks where. It is a dark metal, and shows a woman holding her face as a man gets whipped.

_You remember how that feels, don't you?_ My fingers ghost over the ridges that mar my back and shoulders, a hiss of phantom pain at the memory snaking from my lips. So much as changed, but those lashes are my anchor. They remind me why I started fighting. I helped win our freedom for fear. They, along with all the ridges of healing pain that lace my mind, mean that others will not have to have such scars.

_I am so full of scars. _I look at the sky, then at the rolling hills in the distance as I begin to walk aimlessly about the new face of District 12. Children smile and laugh, running down the streets. Mothers are outside, siting on porches on side streets, babies bouncing on hips. Faces are rounder, children's dimples flash more. Some teenagers sit outside the bakery on the stoop, laughing and sharing a cinnamon roll.

_When I was their age, I was hunting and fighting to survive._ I smile at them as I think of my past. _It was worth it. _

At that moment I catch a glimpse of myself in the window. My dark hair is slightly unruly from my restless sleep. The same chiseled face stares back at me, with the same look of stoic pain that everyone would associate with me back in the day. No one who I used to know would fail to recognize me. I look the same as I did the last time I was here, with the exception of my eyes. They squint back at me, burdened and scored by the lives I ended in my zealous for independence.

_Freedom isn't free. _

I would be the first to tell you. I lost my home, my innocence, and my best friend, all in the pursuit of a better life for the whole. I lost the forest for the trees. I lost myself and those I loved for the rebellion. Peeta, he always saw the whole picture. The only time he lost sight of people was when he was drugged. I give a snort of laughter. I was only able to best a hijacked Peeta, and even then I managed to-

I stop that line of thought and force my mind to contemplate the flagpole in front of the new Justice Building, made of elegant black stone. _Don't go there, don't go there..._

In the end, I am glad she chose him. He is better for her; I wouldn't have been able to take care of her like he can. Even though I wanted Katniss to be my wife, she was first and foremost my friend. And friends want the best for their friends.

Even if it means that you leave because you killed her little sister.

I fight back a wave of emotion and turn back to study my eyes in the window reflection. At one time, girls had flocked to me, but I had held myself aloof from them. Katniss was the girl I wanted. And then I hurt her; irreparably hurt her. I did not fight for her. My one promise to her, I broke as I tried to fulfill it. I wanted to save Prim, and every girl like her. I ended up allowing her to die, even if Coin did not release those bombs that fateful day. Then I abandoned Katniss' burnt husk as I ran away from my own ghosts, leaving her in the care of a mentor haunted by 40 years of blood and bent intentions and a boy who was hardly even done healing. Those eyes stare back at me; eyes that have seen too much. Eyes that grew up too fast. Eyes that sacrificed too much.

Prim versus all of Panem. Katniss versus all of Panem. I can hardly bear to begin to consider application of those two little sentences and roughly dispel them from my mind. I already chose. Prim is dead. I will never be able to look Katniss in the eyes again, because I do not know if I am responsible. I can hardly look myself in the eyes without wondering about all those killed. Was it friendly fire? Was it my fault? Panem is free now. And Prim is dead, along with all the others whose deaths populate my nightmares. There is nothing in the world that I can do to fix that.

I am shaking, but I do not care. Katniss was shaking when I last saw her. She was lost, singing in a room, as I watched the video feed. I never came back for her. I never wrote her. I never did anything right. My hands, the hands that managed to snare rabbits to eke out a survival for my family, the hands that tried to eke out a hope for my nation, managed to ensnare myself more than anyone else. I imagine myself tied in the strands of heated words and good ideas I created with Beetee, slowly dying. I bring my hand up and touch the shadowy image. My hand grazes the cool glass, and I pull it down slowly, leaving ten smeary fingerprints. _Prim used to do that_.

The emotion building up in my throat and I give a shaky breath, hand again pressed against the window, fingers splayed like a child's. The cool glass calms me down slightly, anchoring me. _It isn't fair, it isn't right, but the Capitol killed her. Even if it was _my_ bomb, the Capitol was killing hundred every day. She was a victor's sister; she was on his hit list. _I try to school myself as I glare sightless at my reflection. I will live to avenge Prim's death, and be thankful that it wasn't Rory, or Vick, or Posy. _I have too much to live for to lose it now. Wasn't it Finnick that told me that it takes longer to put yourself together once you fall apart?_ A shaky breath fills my lungs as I struggle to control my sorrow. _I will live so that I can avenge Prim, and Finnick, and Castor, and all the others that died so I could live here. _

I close my eyes to an image of the little blond taking Posy's hand and running down the muddy streets, pointing to the various items as Rory and Vick laugh with her. A single tear slides down my face. I lean my face against the glass.

I hear the teens leaving the stoop, quietly giving me my chance to collect my thoughts. They have grown up with broken adults. They know how to act respectfully around those who act like me. They will live without fear because of me, but I could not stop my sibling from growing up in a war. They own their happiness to all those adults who sacrificed so much; they owe me, they owe Katniss and Peeta, they owe Haymitch, and most of all they owe people like Prim. I blanched a bit and blinked back those dismal thoughts, allowing my eyes to adjust again to the light.

Through my ghostly image on the glass, I see a curious face. She is defenantly of the Seam, with short black braids trailing down her back. At first glance, I see Posy, but then I notice similarities to a certain former hunting partner of mine. Then the eyes catch me. They are Prim's eyes. So much so that I freeze and forget to breath.

_Prim. Prim at her fathers' funeral. Prim laughing at the table. Prim screaming at the Reaping. Prim on my shoulders at the celebration. Prim fixing my back. Prim in her nurse's uniform in District 13. Prim laughing at Buttercup's antics. Prim dead. Was it really worth it?_

But these eyes aren't Prim's in every way. These eyes are more innocent than I ever remember hers being. This little girl has never been hungry, never been truly frightened. But they are also unlike Prims in another way. They portray a different depth, a deeper blue in comparison to a bright sky.

And then I realize that the girl is looking at me from atop a hardwood counter filled with loaves of bread.

The bakery.

The baker.

And I am backing up, tripping over the curb that wasn't always there, slowly backing away from the big picture window displaying cakes that used to make Posy laugh and the daughter of Katniss. Of course, you could never be sure it was hers by just looking, but I _knew_. That girl was hers, just as I knew the second that I saw Katniss the last time face to face that she would never forgive me. Katniss had healed. That was what that little girl meant. Mellark had healed her. He had done what I could not.

No, not could not. Peeta Mellark had done what I _did _not. What I had been too afraid to do. He deserved her more than I did.

I began to run, unable to tell where I was going. I shove past people, only sparing a glance over my shoulder as I hear a man calling my name.

A blond man in an apron, standing outside on the sidewalk, holding his door open. "Gale!"

I do not stop. My feet fly over the road. All these years have not changed my soundless gait, nor had they changed my reaction. _Run to the woods. _That was where I always went. _Our _woods.

We were not our anymore, though. We are not even friends. I am simply the man whose ideals had killed her perfect little sister, and hundreds of others that I would never meet. I'm detested; I know that.

Even if their families do not hate me, I hate myself. I loathe myself enough for all of them joined.

I am in the woods and I hurry to the top of a hill and I stand, lifting my face to the sky and give a shaky breath. _Why did I come back? To see my family? To see her? To see my home? For my father? _

But I know why I came. I came because I was dying. My heart was closing up, all those casualties that were simply numbers in my head, needed losses for the war, where screaming at me in my dreams. They died so that I could have freedom, and I had not even made use of it. The Capitol could never stop me from loving my family, from caring for my friends.

I stand for a while. Listening to the bugs and birds calms me, and my fingers begin to wind long blades of grass into braided knots. All the dead, they died for a cause they believed. _It was worth it_. But I know that my living by myself was not. I can change that; I can live with my family. But I don't know if that is fair to Katniss or Peeta. I don't want to ruin the idyllic lives that they managed to create after the war.

So I stand and braid dandelions in chains like I used to do to make chains for Posy and toss the ropes down the hill. I do not know how long I stand there, feeling lost and broken but hopeful as my fingers weave the strands. The light becomes richer as it does before twilight. I am still standing. The grief that is pressing on my shoulders is tangible, and I can feel it pushing on my chest. I braid on, slowly migrating as i decimate the population of yellow flowers. I work my way along the hill, slowly cresting a ridge. I stop once I realize where I am.

_Our rock._ I cringe, but continue in my healing exercise. I remember Finnick and his rope, but that is nearly to painful, so I clear my mind of thought and grab another handful of flowers. By now, hours have ticked by, leaving in their wake yards of chains, scattered of the hill. My stomach is growling, but I do not feel like leaving my perch, so I chew on blades of grass and plait more. My fingers have become a pale green, and I feel slightly amused at the sight.

"Gale?"

I start at the voice. It is hers; even after all these years, I would know it anywhere. Slowly turning, I address her for the first time in too long. "Catnip?"

She gives me a tentative smile. Her grey eyes seem richer, like her scars had healed into a beautiful design inside her soul. I see no trace of hatred, only controlled joy and cautiousness. _Has she forgotten what I've done? Or forgiven me? _ The last thought is crazy. My Katniss isn't the type to forgive, especially when one has done nothing to earn back her trust.

But then again, she is no longer my Katniss.

"Katniss," I begin, voice breaking as all my stored up tears begin to pour down my face. I drop the flowers. "I'm so sorry…" _So sorry for Prim. So sorry for making you choose. So sorry for breaking my promises. So sorry for leaving you…_

And then she gives a little sob and buries herself in my arms. "Gale…"

We stand there, crying. I haven't cried since I revisited the district to do those propos. All the tears that have been bottled up since then come pouring out, a wave of emotions assaulting my trembling frame and I hiccup and remember everything that I have lost.

We simply stand as the sun begins to draw towards the horizon. It isn't until I am out of tears that I look up and notice Peeta, standing several yards away, holding a jacket in one hand with a little blond boy on his hip. The little girl stands next to him, clutching a cookie. I look at him and his children with a pang. I am past wishing Katniss was mine, but my heart beats faster at the sight of him. I had wanted children. I had never gotten any, since I buried myself in work.

A tiny voice yanks me from my musing. "I saw you today at the bakery," the little girl cranes her neck to look up at me. "You looked sad," sympathy fills her voice and she holds her hand up and speaks softer than before. "I got you a cookie."

I give a little laugh as I accept her gift. "Thank you."

She smiles and steps back as I look up at her father. Peeta's eyes are just as full of compassion as I remember from before. He looks at me and extends a hand after depositing the jacket on the ground. I shake it, searching his eyes. They show no hint of jealousy, no hint of anger. He looks genuinely happy to see me, if not a bit saddened by my obvious pain.

"Do you want to get dinner?" he asks, jerking his head in the general direction of town. "We have some soup, and we could have your family over."

I nod slowly at his invitation. "I would love that."

He smiles and grabs Katniss' hand as we begin to walk away. I am looking at her hand, clutching his as she stares at my face, concern clear. She seems to be trying to say something, but she doesn't get the chance. Her daughter has grabbed her in one hand and allows my large hand to swallow her other. Her shy grin is infectious, and she rises on her tip toes and skips between us, humming the four note piece the little girl sang in the first Game. I am careful not to walk to fast so she can keep up.

As we get into town, Peeta calls his daughter and they hurry towards the house they must share, leaving me alone with Katniss. "I'm glad you came home," is all she says after a long and comfortable silence. She is looking at my face, the small smile that I remember from childhood becoming brighter as she catches my eye.

Something clicks into place in my heart as I look at the darkening sky. "I am too."

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